Digital Citizenship

DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP combines the legacy of 75 years of media literacy with the 21st century digital literacy required to navigate technology today. iKeepSafe shares the view of digital citizenship promoted by Cable in the Classroom:

“a holistic and positive approach to helping children learn how to be safe and secure, as well as smart and effective participants in a digital world. That means helping them understand their rights and responsibilities, recognize the benefits and risks, and realize the personal and ethical implications of their actions.

“Helping a child become a good digital citizen cuts across all curricular disciplines and includes knowledge, awareness, and skills in three key areas:

Safety & Security:  Understanding the risks that we face from others as well as from our own conduct, and the dangers posed by applications like viruses and phishing.

Digital Literacy: Learning how to find, sort, manage, evaluate and create information in digital forms.

Ethics & Community:  Becoming aware of and practicing appropriate and ethical behaviors in a variety of digital environments. This area includes shaping your digital reputation and being a responsible citizen of the communities in which you participate, from social networks, to games, to civic forums.”

The following digital citizenship topic pages will help parents and mentors understand what youth need to know to become full, resilient digital citizens.

Security

Parents and mentors must understand both the positive and negative potential of digital devices in order to take full advantage of the technology. Parents are the internet service providers in their homes and are responsible for protecting data, maintaining secure networks, filtering and monitoring access shared by their children and neighbor children.

Relationships

Digital media are excellent tools for forging and maintaining healthy and safe relationships. . . As with all tools, how we use them determines whether they provide positive opportunities or expose us to risk. Media can either enhance relationships, supporting positive growth, or put users at risk. . . .

Balancing Screen Time

Balancing our real life with screen time can be a trick for adults and kids. Because digital media is useful and engaging—and good at holding our attention—it can be tempting to use it all the time. These tools often interfere with other important activities (like sleeping, eating meals with family, spending time with friends, and physical activity).

Personal Information

In taking advantage of all that digital media has to offer, youth have to make tough choices on what personal information they will share. Some personal information is necessary to facilitate social interactions, employment opportunities, and online purchases. But many kinds of information should only be shared with validated sources and some should not be shared online under any circumstances.

Reputation

Digital communications are “sticky.” Anything communicated through digital media remains accessible indefinitely, which is great news when you have . . . great news. Accomplishments are easy to share, easy to track, and kids and teens can find forums for positive require hiring personnel to do online searches of job candidates.

Ethical Use

Responsible, resilient digital citizens know to operate under the same good judgement online that they use in their offline lives. The Web may feel like a free-for-all, but online resources cost money and time to create and our treatment of other digital citizens matters.